But the combative American music critic Dave Marsh was having none of it he described Lomax as "a dubious figure" who "believed folk culture needed guidance from superior beings like himself".
When Lomax died, aged 87, in 2002, the New York Times described him as a "legendary collector of folk music who was the first to record towering figures like Lead Belly, Muddy Waters and Woody Guthrie". Therein lies the root of the problem that some music scholars have with Alan Lomax, perhaps the greatest, and most obsessive, collector of folk and blues songs of the last century. Soon afterwards, too, Lomax wrote an essay on the copyrighting of songs that began, as Szwed puts it, "by reminding readers that folk song collecting took place within a 'free enterprise system'" and that, alongside the songwriter, several others, including "the collector, who located the folksinger, recorded the song, sometimes arranged or re-edited it…" could deservedly make a claim on copyright. Szwed notes that "a dismayed Alan was persuaded that it would be better to work with the same musical publishing company than against it". This is the moment, though, when the story of Lead Belly's songs and their appropriation becomes truly tangled. He also found out that the publishing rights to "Goodnight, Irene" had been copyrighted "under the name of a British affiliate". On a visit to Britain in the late 50s, Alan Lomax discovered that Donegan, as John Szwed puts it, "was copying Lead Belly's songs, along with his performance style and introductory remarks, profiting from both his performances of these songs and his claim to being their composer". (Lead Belly sang several other originals for the Lomaxes, including "Goodnight, Irene", which subsequently became a huge hit for the folk group the Weavers.) Many of the songs collected by the Lomaxes were published in book compilations like Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Lead Belly (1936) and Folk Songs: USA (1946), which become primers for British skiffle and trad-folk groups, among others. It was written, though, by a black blues singer, Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly.īack in the 1930s, the American song collectors John Lomax and his son, Alan, had recorded Lead Belly singing the song in Angola prison, Louisiana, where the blues musician was serving time for attempted murder. Donegan had assumed ownership of the song by simply claiming the British copyright, which was unregistered and considered to be in the public domain. The rest, as they say, is history.īoth Lennon and McCartney would have assumed that "Rock Island Line" was a Lonnie Donegan original, not least because it was credited to him on the record label and the song's sheet music. On 6 July that same year, the 15-year-old Paul McCartney, another Donegan fan, attended a church fete in Woolton village to hear the Quarrymen play. Donegan was a huge influence on the young John Lennon, who formed his own skiffle group, the Quarrymen, in 1956. I n 1955, "Rock Island Line" was a chart hit in Britain and America for Lonnie Donegan, the biggest star of the short-lived skiffle boom.
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